Graphics Cards - Page 222

The release of AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 480 isn't too far away, but we have no real performance data on the Polaris-based video card, until now. According to benchmarks on the 3DMark database, the RX 480 has achieved a 3DMark 11 Performance Score of 14,461 - not bad for a card worth $199.

At this performance level, AMD will have no issues with the RX 480 meeting the minimum VR spec, but it'll also handle 1080p and 1440p gaming like a champion. Again, for $199 to $229, depending on whether you want the 4GB or 8GB model. With VR headset sales set to expand over the coming years, AMD is positioning itself incredibly well for consumers. Sure, the GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 kick some serious ass, but not everyone has $400-$699 to spend on a video card - but $199? That's a huge market.

We have Radeon RX 480 samples coming soon, but we can't tell you when our review will be up - but stay tuned to TweakTown for more information on Polaris very soon.

Colorful impressed us so much at Computex 2016 with their range of GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 video cards, but now the company has made their GTX 1070 video cards official, with a few different variants.

The company has launched three GTX 1070 cards, with the iGameGTX1070 X-TOP-8G, followed by the iGameGTX1070 U-TOP-8G (guys, you need to use a space bar...) and of course, the Colorful GTX 1070-8G Founders Edition. All three cards don't vary from the 16nm FinFET-powered Pascal GPU, with its 1920 CUDA cores and 8GB of GDDR5 clocked at 8GHz on a 256-bit memory bus.

Colorful hasn't provided clock speeds just yet, but we should expect something special from the iGame-branded cards. We do know that both of the cards are based on the i-MSD from Colorful, which is the iGame-Modular Structure Design. The iGame-based cards have a 'new cooling base' and 8+2-phase power, with a newly designed cooling fan which is sure to keep the GP104-powered card nice and cool, even when hitting those huge overclocks.

Computex 2016 - Ugh, there were so many GeForce GTX 1080 cards at Computex 2016, that I literally had a nerd overload. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition is a beautiful card on its own, but the custom design cards are... well... just so freakin' beautiful. We have a small roundup video below that you can check out.

We caught a glimpse of what MSI were showing off, some of the cards from GIGABYTE, as well as the monster GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Edition from ZOTAC. One of the new members on the block is Colorful, which most of you have probably never heard of. Colorful is a gigantic Chinese video card maker that should be sampling us in the very near future as the first media in the world outside of China to receive a Colorful video card. I even introduced Luke from Linus Tech Tips to Colorful, as I love his work on video (and he's a super-cool guy as well), so expect some major exposure from Colorful in the future.

MSI's cards impressed me, as I have their GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G in the house right now and have been benchmarking it for days. I also have the G1 GAMING edition of GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 1080 which will be benchmarked next week. So expect a flood of GTX 1080 reviews before AMD flings their Polaris-based offerings led by the Radeon RX 480 into the wild later this month.

AMD released new drivers for the just launched Mirror's Edge: Catalyst today, and NVIDIA is hot on their heels.

Apart from preparing you for DICE's parkour game, the GeForce 368.39 set contains optimizations for the GTX 1070 releasing on Friday and Edge of Nowhere performance improvements for you Oculus Rift owners.

Mirror's Edge has seen performance complaints from some early players across the web, so hopefully between the two sets of drivers, the game is now in good shape.

AMD has just unleashed a new set of Radeon Software Crimson Edition drivers, with the new 16.6.1 set of drivers including some optimizations for both Mirror's Edge Catalyst and Paragon. Not only that, but we have a new CrossFire driver for Dark Souls 3, too. You can download the new RSCE 16.6.1 drivers here.

As for the release notes, here's what to expect from Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.6.1:

Support for:

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is already a super-fast video card, but what happens when you crank the GP104 GPU to 2.5GHz on liquid nitrogen? Yeah, well GALAX has been the first to do so, using their overclocking skills on their own GALAX GeForce GTX 1080 HOF OC video card, as reported by Nordic Hardware.

GALAX drove the GPU right up to a huge 2.5GHz using LN2 cooling, matched up with the new Intel Core i7-6950X processor, but even at 2.5GHz, it couldn't beat the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X at 2.2GHz. But remember, we're in the early days of the GTX 1080, so we should expect much more in the future.

The GALAX GeForce GTX 1080 HOF OC rocks 2 x 8-pin PCIe power connectors, but now I have to wonder... when will we see 3GHz on a GTX 1080?

With NVIDIA already dominating with two next-gen video cards in the form of the GP104-based GeForce GTX 1080 and the newer, and far better value for money card in the GeForce GTX 1070... what's next? The GeForce GTX Titan X successor, that's what.

The GP102-400 GPU has been spotted, with the 'full fat' core that we all know and love. This is the GPU that should find its way onto the Titan X successor, and even the GTX 1080 Ti. Considering the $999 price on the Titan X when it launched, we can expect the Pascal-based successor to be priced at a similar level, or higher. At the similar $999 price, I don't see NVIDIA being able to use HBM2 for multiple reasons. First, the yields aren't great, and second; NVIDIA is using all of its HBM2 for the Tesla P100.

NVIDIA will most likely use GDDR5X on the Titan X, as there is - at least to me, no performance benefit of HBM2 right now. It would increase the cost of the card by at least 50%, and that's not what NVIDIA needs, or wants. But, with the full-fat GP102-400 GPU behind it, we should expect up to 50% more performance compared to the GTX 1080, which would be incredible. It would be a 4K 60FPS gaming card without a problem, but now we need to know - will it be offered in two variants? 8GB and 16GB? I think so.

Computex 2016 - With EVGA debuting its stylish RGB-illuminated SLI bridges for NVIDIA's new Pascal-based video cards, MSI has followed suit with its own 2-way HB SLI bridge.

Unlike its 4-way SLI bridges, MSI's new Pascal-based 2-way high-bandwith SLI bridges don't have fans on them, and are designed to accommodate multi-GPU setups by 2-way SLI-ing NVIDIA's new GeForce Series-10 video cards.

At MSI's booth, the 2-way SLI bridge is seen attached to two high-end MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming Z 8G video cards, sporting an LED-lit dragon logo and a brushed chrome-and-silver style. High-bandwidth SLI bridges are encouraged for multi-GPU builds in order to hit optimum 4k 60Hz/120Hz and beyond.

AMD revealed its next-gen Radeon RX 480 during Computex 2016, with one of the demos displaying during the reveal being Oxide Games' Ashes of the Singularity. The demo saw AMD comparing the Radeon RX 480 in CrossFire against NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080.

During the demo, there were a lot of people - myself included, that noticed the image quality between the two were not identical at all. Well, Robert Hallock, AMD's Technical Marketing boss, took to Reddit to provide some answers. He provided the full system specs and drivers used for the demo, which included an Intel Core i7-5930K, 32GB of DDR4, Windows 10, and for the drivers: AMD Driver: 16.30-160525n-230356E, and the NVIDIA Driver: 368.19.

Both GPUs were running the 'crazy' settings at 1080p with 8x MSAA and V-Sync disabled. Hallock went into great detail, explaining: "Ashes uses procedural generation based on a randomized seed at launch. The benchmark does look slightly different every time it is run. But that, many have noted, does not fully explain the quality difference people noticed".

UPDATE: EVGA's Jacob Freeman says that the RGB high-bandwidth SLI bridges are "2-way only" and are expected to release in mid-June. Here's another shot of the lineup.

Computex 2016 - EVGA revealed three new RGB high-bandwidth SLI bridges for NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 10-series video cards, allowing users to add a bit pizzazz and style to their new EVGA-branded GTX 1080 cards.

EVGA's new 2-way HB SLI bridges sport full RGB illumination that can sync up with the RGB colors on EVGA's new GeForce GTX 1080 FTW and EVGA GTX 1080 Classified video cards, adding quite a bit of stylish flair to any enthusiast build. The new high-bandwidth SLI bridges come in three different sizes for various configurations: 1U (small size with no gap between the cards), 2U (medium-sized with a one-slot gap between the cards), and 3U (longer with a two-slot gap between the cards).

Computex 2016 -- TweakTown has learned that MSI's cylindrical Vortex G65 gaming PC is about to get a refresh that rocks a pair of NVIDIA's mobile Pascal video cards in SLI, suggesting that the 1080m and 1070m reveals are right around the corner.

When MSI debuted the Mac Pro-inspired Vortex G65 earlier this year, its high-end model rocked a powerful GTX 980 SLI configuration. Not 980m, but desktop class 980 MXM format GPUs. But as I perused MSI's booth at Computex today, I noticed something curious. When MSI first announced the system, the info card obviously said something to the effect of "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900 series." This info card said "NVIDIA latest generation video card (SLI)."

When I asked an MSI representative on the show floor if they were planning an upgrade, he very heavily implied (along with a joke about non-disclosure agreements) that the demo model not hooked up to any monitors contained NVIDIA's mobile GeForce 1080 card in SLI, though it wasn't clear whether these would be the proper mobile variant or an MXM format like the 980 used in their prior model. I asked him if he'd be willing to open up the G65 and he politely declined.

Computex 2016 - While I'm sitting in the Westin hotel for the AMD press conference where we're expecting the price of their next-gen GPU to be revealed, The Wall Street Journal has published an article claiming that the new Polaris-based card will be priced at $199.

The new Radeon RX 480 is built on the 14nm node, with all Polaris-based products ready for VR gaming in a big way, with HTC and Oculus confirming these new cards will be a great deal for VR gamers who don't want to spend an insane amount of money.

There's so much more I want to say, but we're under NDA from AMD for everything else for a little while yet - so you'll have to wait for more information on the Radeon RX 480... for now.

Computex 2016 - We had our entire first day of Computex at the Grand Hyatt with a million and one meetings, where we got some hands-on time with some custom GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 video cards from EVGA.

EVGA had a bunch of cards on display, including the huge GeForce GTX 1080 Classified, which is sure to have gamers drooling all over their keyboards. We've got photos of them all above, and below, so we have to ask - which one do you like best? We have the EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SuperClocked, EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FTW, and the GTX 1080 Classified.

All of them looked great, but I definitely have a soft spot for EVGA's new GP104-based cards... and I simply can't wait to get them into my lab.

Computex 2016 - Following up the GIGABYTE GTX 1080 G1 card from last week is the GIGABYTE GTX 1080 XTREME, as seen at Computex. Whereas the former appears to interested in striking a balance between temperature and performance, the XTREME seems to go all out.

For starters, GIGABYTE's second offering sports extra HDMI connectors, primarily for VR purposes. Then it "guarantees [...] higher overclocking capability." So it's safe to say it's not holding back, at least not much.

Other features include Windforce stack fans with alternate spinning design, 16.8M customizable colour lighting, aerospace-grade PCB coating, and four-year warranty with online registration.

Computex 2016 - ZOTAC was one of the first companies I wanted to visit at Computex this year, purely to check out their new GeForce GTX 1080 range of cards. They were just setting up as we rolled past, but the one card they had in their hands was the new GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Edition.

ZOTAC's new GeForce GTX 1080 AMP! Extreme Edition is the company's flagship card, with a triple-fan cooling system and a custom heat sink that is just gigantic. We're sure this card is going to have some serious overclocks applied to the GPU and the 8GB of GDDR5X, but we can't confirm it just yet - this is something we should be able to clarify tomorrow.

The card is absolutely huge, but it actually weighs less than the GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition. What I want to know is, how much faster will it be than the GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition, which we'll find out soon.

EVGA has chimed in with its new GeForce GTX 1080 video cards, announcing four new cards powered by NVIDIA's GP104 GPU.

The new cards feature EVGA's ACX 3.0 cooling tech, with SHP 3.0 providing better heat pipes and copper contact area for improved cooling performance, as well as optimized fan curves for quieter gaming. ACX 3.0 coolers feature optimized swept fan blades, double ball bearings and extreme low power motor, which pushes more air flow, with less power.

Select EVGA ACX 3.0 models will feature 10cm fans and RGB LEDs, which provides gamers with total control over the look of their card. The new EVGA cards also include PrecisionX OC software, that "unlocks the power of Pascal", says EVGA.

We have yet to have received a Colorful sample here in our GPU labs from Colorful, but we've been in deep discussions with them for weeks now, and hopefully we can get our hands-on their exciting new GeForce GTX 1080 iGame card, which looks delicious.

Colorful's new GeForce GTX 1080 iGame card features a factory overclock on the GP104 GPU, which is at 1847MHz. Colorful has used their iGame-Modular Structure Design (i-MSD) on their GTX 1080, with their cooling technology being separated from the cooler into "functional modules and appearance modules which has the PCB, cooling fins and rear plate integrated centering on the PCB. The rear-plate also reinforces the PCB which gives the card extra durability and negates deformation from stress and long usage".

There's also customizable RGB lighting that can be tweaked through Colorful's iGame-Zone software, with the fans on the card composed by a three-piece grooved design, with interesting zigzag diversion lines on the edge for improved airflow and cooling efficiency with up to 30% increased air volume

We're so sorry for our total flood on the GeForce GTX 1080 cards, but how exciting is it! MSI has joined in on the fun, announcing a few different cards to drool over.

MSI has the new GeForce GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G, which has the new Twin Frozr VI cooler, designed to allow for higher GPU and memory clock speeds for improved performance. MSI has used their usual, and slick-looking red/black theme with a dragon RBG LED on the side that can be tweaked to nearly unlimited colors thanks to its 16.8 million colors.

The GTX 1080 GAMING X 8G has a new custom 10-phase PCB design, with an 8+6-pin power connector that allows for higher overclocking performance.

The landslide of GeForce GTX 1080 announcements continue, with ZOTAC showing off their new cards, Inno3D and now Palit. Palit has unveiled their new GTX 1080 GameRock card, telling us that they want to 'rock'n'roll your game'.

What does Palit bring to the GeForce GTX 1080 table? We have 0dB tech fan, a honeycomb bracket, optimized air flow, TurboFan Blade and two 10cm fans. We have 8+2-phase PWM, dual BIOS, and RGB lighting on the Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock card.

Not only that, but the company has unveiled their GeForce GTX 1080 Super JetStream, which excites me as the GTX 980 Ti Super JetStream was one of the most impressive cards from the GTX 900 series last year.

ZOTAC has just unveiled their new AMP! and AMP! Extreme variants of the GeForce GTX 1080, with both cards including some nice cooling technology improvements over the already impressive GTX 900 series cards.

The ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP! cards feature Spectre, a new lighting system that allows gamers to customize the colors and feel of their gaming experience with mood lighting, which is all done through ZOTAC's FireStorm software.

Not only that, but the AMP! Extreme cards will push out some serious performance, with the triple-fan IceStorm cooling technology mixed with the EKO Fan system, promising up to 30% increased airflow compared to the traditional fans.